


The Most Important Message

by coralysendria



Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Father-Son Relationship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-17
Updated: 2012-12-17
Packaged: 2017-11-21 09:49:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/596327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coralysendria/pseuds/coralysendria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Howard Stark contemplates his son.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Most Important Message

**Author's Note:**

> Betaed by the lovely Bethynyc.
> 
> I do not own these characters. (Unfortunately.) This is a fan work. No infringement is intended and no profit will be had hereby.

Howard Stark settled into his desk chair, allowing his head to fall back and his eyes to close. He stayed that way until the expensive leather had warmed to his body temperature. A heavy sigh gusted past his lips. God, this PR bullshit was exhausting. They'd been trying to get the Expo introduction right all damned day. He hated doing crap like this, but since it was the _Stark_ Expo, this wasn't something he could push off on Obadiah. It didn't help that Tony had somehow escaped both Maria's and Jarvis' watchful eyes and wandered into his office while they were working. At least the boy hadn't damaged the Expo model when he'd pulled the miniature Belgian waffle house from its moorings.

The boy. Christ, no wonder he was such a failure as a father; he couldn't even think of Tony as his son. Just "the boy." Howard opened his eyes and reached for the Scotch sitting on his desk. True, he had never liked children. He had little experience with them, and had never been able to enjoy being around them. There were certain expectations of a man in his position, however, and an heir was one of them. He had promised Maria when she became pregnant that he would try. After all, it was different when it was your own kid, right? That's what everyone told him. But when the nurse brought Tony out, the only thing he felt for the red, wrinkly, squalling bundle was a vague sense of discomfort. He had taken the baby, and posed for the photographer, but had surrendered the child back to the nurse as soon as was politic.

It had been that way the boy's whole life; his very presence made Howard uncomfortable, so it was simplest just to avoid him altogether. Easy enough to do when you were the CEO of your own company, and were rarely at home anyway. At least Tony was turning out to be something of an engineering child prodigy, which did make Howard immensely proud. _That_ was something he could relate to, the need to take things apart and put them back together so that they were better than before, the drive to experiment, to make new things. He supposed that deep down, he _did_ love the boy, but he seemed utterly incapable of showing it. The _butler_ showed more affection for Tony than Howard seemed able to do. Perhaps when Tony was older....

Ice clinked as Howard took another sip of his drink. "Face it, Stark," he snarled at himself. "You're a lousy father." 

Maybe he should have tried filming this Expo crap at his SI office instead of his home office, but he wanted the Expo model where he could keep an eye on it, which meant having it in his home, even though he spent so little time there. He just felt it was safer here. It would have to be moved to the Expo's main pavilion soon enough.

Leaving his drink on his desk, he wandered over to the model, gazing down at it meditatively. It was a huge thing, built in four separate panels that could be joined like the leaves of a dining room table. Obadiah thought it was conceit that had led him to design the Expo layout himself, not trusting it to any of the people on his staff who were paid to do such things, but no. It wasn't conceit. It was necessity. And he had made sure that when the model was built, everything was exactly where he had specified it be, to the millimeter.

No one, not Obadiah, not even Maria, knew what the model -- and therefore, the Expo -- hid in plain sight. Anton Vanko might guess were he to see it, but Vanko was drowning in vodka in Siberia. Howard's research on the Tesseract and the weapons it powered had led him to this discovery. He was certain of it, positive that he was right, sure that he had discovered a new element that would revolutionize the world. One that might solve all of the world's energy problems. So of course there was a catch. The technology did not yet exist that would allow him to synthesize it, though God knew he had tried. Everything he had done for the last couple of decades, including partnering up with the not at all missed Vanko, designing and building the arc reactor, even instituting the Stark Expo, had been to discover a way to synthesize his new element. He knew now, in his bones, that he could not bring this discovery to fruition. Like the flying cars of his youth, he would have to leave it to the future. To the boy. To his son -- to Tony. He just hoped that he was right about Tony's budding genius, and that the boy would understand what Howard was bequeathing him.

The film equipment was still set up in his office; he'd asked them to leave it. He turned on the camera to record what might be the most important message of his life, a message to his son.

"Tony. You're too young to understand this right now, so I thought I would put it on film for you."


End file.
